When Excel is not Enough

By Toni CameronOn February 13, 2020January 1, 2020

After month-end, do you look forward to lighting up the 80’s hair metal, cracking your knuckles, and loading up Excel so that you can rock those financials? Well, maybe you’re not as excited about rocking the financials as we are here at TL;DR Accounting, and that’s okay. But perhaps you’re wondering if Excel is still enough for you.

Is it time to fly the Excel nest and look for a different or more robust piece of software that’s custom-made for bookkeeping?

When It’s Time for Reinforcements

We’re not saying that you should uninstall Excel — not at all. However, there comes a time for a full-featured software suite like Quickbooks Online (QBO) or Xero to take center stage, and for Excel to start playing second-fiddle as a supplementary piece of software.

Is one of these situations true for you?

You’ve hired one more more employees

You earn more than six figures per year

You no longer have time to give your Excel books the tender, loving care they need, or for any other reason you’re falling behind

Updating your books just isn’t a cost-effective use of your time when you could be out there doing your “thing” and earning more money (be it counseling, consulting, training zebras, or whatever it is that YOU are best at)

Your time-is-money calculation is telling you that a monthly subscription to QBO will pay for itself

You’re considering outsourcing your bookkeeping

If any of the above are true, it’s time to call in reinforcements. Do yourself a favor and grab a copy of QBO, Xero, or one of the alternative bookkeeping packages out there. For payroll we 100% recommend that you get Gusto1; it’s what we use for our own payroll and we require all of our clients to use it as well because it’s such a good program. Plus, it integrates cleanly with QBO.

How Do I Know If It Is Cost-Effective to Switch to QBO From Excel?

Well, how long each month does it take you to update your bookkeeping in Excel?

Time in excel X .5 = Estimate of time saved with QBO

Estimated time saved X your hourly charge for clients = Cost of time to use Excel

You can then compare the cost of time to use Excel with how much it costs to sign up for QBO. QBO on average costs $25 to 35/mo.

Perhaps some of you are excited about the idea of upgrading your Excel books into Quickbooks in order to crank up your accounting efficiency. But others of you may find the idea of setting up QBO to be a bit intimidating, or maybe just not worth your time. If that’s the case, just give us a call and we can set up QBO for you. After all, it’s what we do best.

We can also set up Gusto for you if you have payroll, and even link your Gusto account to your new QBO account so you’re all set up for accounting success.

TL;DR: Is Excel bookkeeping causing you headaches? Well, it’s not an option to just “stop” keeping your books. Instead, you can keep them more efficiently with bookkeeping software, or just give us a call and we’ll do it for you!

1TL;DR: Accounting may earn a commission or credit for completed Gusto signups made through our referral link, though any such commission does not impact our honest recommendation of the software and service.